1.7.3-Doeskin-pantaloons
Brick!Club 1.7.3: A Tempest in a Skull A lot of people really like this chapter, but honestly, I’m like. “Blargh it’s so long so much of Valjean’s psyche why.” I feel like the whole thing could be summed up with this quote: "Should he remain in paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an angel?" which I really like. But someone once said to me about Lord of the Rings that the reason the book is so bloody long and tedious is because after you read it, you have to feel like you’ve been the a year-long quest with an evil ring weighing down on you, and similarly, I guess Hugo really wants us to feel like we’ve got this crisis of moral conscience. We have to understand exactly what Valjean is thinking, both sides of the story, so that we can fully appreciate what’s going on here. And it’s not a straightforward decision, either. I guess I should put it out there - do other people think that Valjean makes the right choice? Because I’m realyl not sure he did. Or at least, I don’t think he fully understood the choice as he made it. Champmathieu aside (because he is only one man, and there is a whole district on the other side of the equation) Valjean chooses not to carry out: this evil action which compromises his soul alone… The way I see it, surely it is better to compromise one’s own soul for the good of hundreds - or even thousands - or people, than to save one’s soul and one’s conscience but have the entire area suffer because of it? Surely it is more noble, even? But I guess Hugo and I widely differ on ideas of morality. The heart of the problem, I think - and this is kind of a left-of-field heart of the problem - is that Valjean has set up the whole district to rely on him for its prosperity. As somebody said once - ‘Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life.’ Valjean has basically given the district a fish. And he’s able to see that this is a problem, and that without him a whole country-side must perish! but strangely, he isn’t able to see the solution. He thinks, for example, that he is the only person that can help Cosette. Why? Why not tell the sisters about the situation, and have them help Cosette? And on a larger scale - why not set things up and put mechanisms in place to see these schools and hospitals and so on running sustainably in the long term, rather than out of his own pocket? I mean, I guess Valjean is hardly a businessman, but it just strikes me as one of the greatest unaddressed tragedies of the novel that after Valjean leaves, the whole area just falls straight back into disrepair. Lastly - and on a different topic - there’s a couple of quotes which I’m curious about: he had seen in an ironmonger’s shop an ancient clock for sale, upon which was written the name, Antoine-Albin de Romainville. and later The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past. He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April. So what’s the deal with Romainville? I googled around a bit, and I’ve learnt that Albin (as in Antoine-Albin) is the name of another Hugolian character in the short story ‘Claude Gueux’, who apparently helps Claude to escape from prison. I don’t know if this is relevent. As for Romainville, there are many people writing in great detail about how they don’t know why it’s there, but none writing about how they do. Any thoughts, anyone? And finally by the way guys in case you didn’t get it Valjean is Jesus yep.